Slave Safari

by Warren Murphy

  They continued marching into the night, pushing onward and upward. Remo was amazed at the ability of the soldiers to keep going under the burden of Chiun’s baggage.

  Around one bend a fire shone from a high wall.

  Chiun cupped his hands to his face and yelled the Loni dialect of Swahili.

  “I told them I was here,” he said to Remo.

  Now we get it, said Remo, prepared to slash his way back down the mountain.

  From arches in the wall came men bearing torches and spears, just a few men at first who hung back and waited until their numbers grew, and then moved forward, their torches illuminating the night with fire as though they were high-beam lamps.

  There were too many with too many spears to escape unscathed. Remo decided to take a route through the center, prepare his body to take some wounds, and then to keep going. Retreat was impossible. Behind him, he heard Chiun’s trunks striking the ground, and the scuffling feet of the Hausa soldiers as they turned and fled down the mountainside.

  Oddly enough, the Loni tribesmen did not pursue them. Instead, when they got within striking distance, they fell to their knees and a cry of praise rose from their throats in powerful unison.

  “Sinanju. Sinanju. Sinanju.”

  Then, up over their heads on the mountaintop, Remo could see in the flame light a tall black woman wearing a short white gown. She carried in her hands a shiny metal brazier from which a fire burned. Remo and Chiun moved closer, and the crowd which chanted “Sinanju” stopped upon one word from her.

  She spoke. Chiun translated for Remo.

  “Welcome, Master of Sinanju. Our ambitions have been awaiting the return of your awesome magnificence. Oh, Awesome Magnificence, the Gods of the Loni greet you in the fire. Our hopes await the glory of thy majestic presence. Oh, Awesome Magnificence, the throne of the Loni once again will be secure because you have deigned to come among us.”

  “They’re really saying those things about you, Chiun?” said Remo from the side of his mouth.

  “That is how civilized people greet the Master of Sinanju,” said Chiun, the latest Master of Sinanju.

  “Shit,” said Remo Williams, ex-Newark cop.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GENERAL WILLIAM FORSYTHE BUTLER rented a car at the Washington, D.C. airport when his plane landed there, and drove out in the quiet night toward Norfolk, Virginia.

  The air was sweet with the hot smells of spring and he rode with the air conditioning turned off and the windows open, listening to the land, feeling its beauty around him.

  How long ago had those first slaves set foot on this land? Had they perhaps traveled this same road? Of course, it would not have been much more than a cart path then. Perhaps the rich dirt got between their toes and warmed and welcomed them and they thought the way Butler once had: that the land was rich and good. After a trip of unrelieved brutality, perhaps they felt that they had chanced into something good—a growing, fertile land where they could build a full and rewarding life. The Loni princes would have thought that way. And instead of happiness and fulfillment, they found only the chain and the whip and the sun-hammered days of backbreaking labor in the fields, labor unrelieved by the release of humor, by the circle of family; by the slow, lazy forgetfulness of happiness.

  The Loni had once been prideful people. How many of them had tried to change their lot, first by reasoning with the white-eye brutes, then by fleeing, then by rebellion?

  Butler thought of them and then of what the Loni, subjugated and beaten, had become even in their natural land.

  He trod heavier on the gas pedal. In Norfolk, he drove to the city’s bustling waterfront and parked his car in a now unsupervised parking lot near a small amusement arcade. Before he even left the car, the watery feel and smell of salt and brack coated everything. He could feel it working its way into the soft silk fibers of his light blue suit, as he stepped along the riverfront street.

  He stopped near the piers and looked up and down the street, blinking and bright with neon lights for a half-mile in each direction. His man would be in one of three places.

  The first bar was air-conditioned cold, and he felt the sweat on his body dry almost immediately as he stepped inside the door. It was a sailor’s bar. A white sailor’s bar. The tavern was filled with seamen, their clothes, their tattoos, the leathery but still untanned look of their faces and hands giving away their occupation. Heads turned toward him as he stood in the doorway, realizing he had made a mistake and this was not the bar he was looking for, but determined to brazen it out as a free man, first looking along the bar, then toward the tables, scanning faces.

  “Hey, you,” the bartender called. “This is a private bar.”

  “Yassuh,” Butler said. “Jes’ looking for somebody, boss.”

  “Well, you won’t find him in here.”

  “Not a him, boss. A her. You see her, maybe? Big blonde woman with big titties. Wearing a little, short, red dress, way up high around the nice, fine, warm ass,” He grinned, showing teeth.

  The bartender sputtered.

  Butler said, “Never mind, boss. She ain’t here. But if she come in, you tell her to get her white ass home, ’cause her man gonna whomp her good iften she don’t. You tell her, she don’t get right home, and she ain’t getting no more of this good stuff right here,” Butler said, stroking the groin of his trousers.

  There were a few muzzled mumbles. The bartender’s mouth still worked, getting ready to talk, but before he could speak, Butler turned and walked out into the street, letting the heavy wood and glass door swing shut behind him.

  He stopped here on the sidewalk and laughed, a full, roaring laugh that only a trained, intelligent linguist’s ear could tell was punctuated by the Loni throat click of anger.

  Then Butler turned and walked away down the block. It didn’t feel so oppressively hot anymore. The heat felt good on his skin.

  The second tavern was uneventful, but empty and he found his man in the third saloon he entered. The man sat in the back, his face café au lait light against the dark blue of his crisp tailored gabardine uniform. Despite the heat, he wore his braided jacket and his braided duck-billed cap, with the gold stringwork across the crown and bill.

  The bar was noisy with black sailors and no one looked up when Butler came in or paid any special attention to the black dude in the light blue suit. He was twice offered drinks by sailors as he walked the length of the bar and turned them down with what he hoped was a gracious shake of his, head, and finally reached the table where the ship’s officer sat, drinking alone, a bottle of Cutty Sark scotch in front of him.

  The officer looked up as Butler eased into the seat.

  “Hello, Captain,” Butler said.

  “Why, Colonel Butler,” the man said. “What a pleasure to see you.” His tongue was a little thick in his mouth; he had been drinking too much, Butler realized with distaste. “It’s been a long while.”

  “Yes,” Butler said, “but now I have need of your services.”

  The ship’s officer smiled softly as he filled his old-fashioned glass to the brim with Cutty Sark. He sniffed the smoky scotch, lifted it to his mouth, and then began to swallow it smoothly, slowly.

  He stopped when the glass was half empty. “Why, of course,” he said. “Same arrangement?”

  Butler nodded.

  The same arrangement meant $5,000 in cash for the captain of the Liberian-registered tanker. At least that was the polite fiction that Butler and the ship’s captain maintained. The full truth was that the “same arrangement” meant that the captain’s wife and mother and children who lived in Busati would continue to live there and not turn up dead in a ditch. This point had been made clear at Butler’s first meeting with the captain ten months before; it had never been raised again since there was no need for it. The captain remembered.

  “However,” Butler added, “there will be a slight difference this time.” He looked around the room to be sure no one was watching or listening. The small b
ar reverberated with the soul-screeching of the jukebox. Reassured, Butler said, “Two women.”

  “Two?” the captain said.

  Butler smiled. “Two. But one will not complete the trip.”

  The captain sipped his drink, then smiled again. “I see,” he said. “I see.” But he did not see why he should carry two women for the same price he was paid for carrying one. Yet, neither did he see how he could raise the subject to Butler without risking serious trouble. Again, he said, “I see.”

  “Good,” said Butler. “When do you sail?”

  The captain glanced down at his watch. “Five o’clock,” he said. “Just before dawn.”

  “I’ll be there,” Butler said. He rose from the table.

  “Join me in a drink, Colonel?” the captain asked.

  “Sorry, no. I never drink.”

  “Too bad. I should think you would. It makes life so much easier.”

  Butler put his big hand on the table and leaned forward to the officer. “You don’t understand, Captain. Nothing could be easier than my life is now. Or more pleasurable.”

  The captain nodded. Butler paused a moment, almost challenging a comment, but when none came, he pushed away from the table, turned and left.

  Butler’s next-stop was a motel on the outskirts of the city, where he rented a room under the name of F. B. Williams, producing identification in that name, paying cash and rebuffing efforts by the motel clerk to engage him in conversation.

  Butler checked the room. The door locks satisfied him. He tossed his small traveling bag on the bed and returned to the car.

  For an hour, he cruised the streets of Norfolk, looking for a person. It had to be a special kind of person.

  Finally, he found her. She was a tall willowy blonde with ashen hair. She stood on a corner near a traffic light in the time-honored fashion of whores everywhere—ready to cross the street if a police car came along, but willing to stand there forever if the fuzz didn’t come, or at least until the right kind of man came along in the right kind of car.

  Butler saw her, quickly drove the rented Buick around the block, then timed it so that he rolled up in front of her as the traffic light turned red.

  The girl looked at him through the windshield and Butler pressed the button that unlocked the car doors. The heavy, clicking sound was another universal signal. The girl came over, leaned on the door and stuck her head inside the open window, carefully glancing into the back seat first. She was just about the right size and age, Butler guessed. The coloration looked about right also.

  “Want to party?” she said.

  “Sure,” Butler said.

  “Go down for $15, straight for $25.”

  “You go all night?” Butler asked. He thought it odd that the words and phrases of the street came back to him so easily, almost as if they had never left his mind.

  “Naah,” the girl said. “All night’s a bummer.”

  “Three hundred dollars make it more pleasant?” Butler asked, knowing that the figure was outrageous and could have hired the best efforts of any three girls on the block.

  “You got three hundred?”

  Butler nodded.

  “Let’s see it.”

  “Get in and I’ll show you.”

  The girl opened the door and slid into the front seat next to Butler. The light was green and he turned the corner and pulled up into a spot near an all-night bookstand.

  Butler reached his wallet from his pocket and took out three one-hundred-dollar bills, making sure that the girl got a look at the remaining fat wad of bills in the wallet. He held the three up in front of the girl.

  “Payment in advance,” she said warily.

  “Two hundred now,” he said. “You can stash it. The other hundred after.”

  “How come you’re so eager?” she said.

  “Look. I’m no freak. No whips, none of that shit. I just like white women. If you’re good to me, there’s another hundred in it that nobody has to know about.”

  She looked at Butler’s face again, hard this time, obviously trying to fit him into one of her danger categories of fuzz, freaks and fighters, but he didn’t match. “Okay,” she said, “wait here. I’m going to drop off the two hundred and I’ll be right back.”

  Butler nodded. He wouldn’t trust a prostitute out of sight for any reason but money, so he had made a point of showing her all the cash in his wallet and her little brain already was working overtime, he knew, trying to figure out how to get more out of him than the four hundred dollars already promised. She would be back as soon as she gave the two hundred to her pimp.

  Three minutes later she returned and as she slid into the front seat she grabbed him.

  “My name’s Thelma,” she said. “What’s yours?”

  “Simon,” he said. “I’ve already got a room.” He snapped the door locks shut and drove off.

  Ten minutes later, they were in Butler’s motel room. Twenty minutes later, she was tied, gagged, drugged and lying on the floor behind the bed, not visible from the window and out of reach of the telephone. The last was an unnecessary precaution because she would be out for the rest of the night

  Butler looked at her one more time before leaving the room and he was satisfied. The size was right; the hair coloring about right. It wouldn’t be perfect; it certainly might not fool anyone for too long, but it should do. It would buy enough time.

  He whistled as he drove out through the hot city into the rolling fox-hunting hills of rich-bitch Virginia.

  He drove the road three times before he found the cutoff to the long winding drive that led to the Butler estate. With his headlights out, and after sitting in the dark for a moment, he could see the main house high up on a hill, two hundred yards from the road. He decided not to drive up; the roadway was probably hooked up to an alarm. He cruised slowly down the highway for another hundred yards, found a deep shoulder off the road covered by an overhang of trees, and drove in.

  He closed the car up, checked his pockets to make sure he had his materials and then set across the razor-cut lawns of the Butler estate toward the big house on the hill, keeping close to the line of trees at the property’s northern end.

  As he loped, he glanced at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. Cutting it close, but still enough time.

  The grass oozed up a damp coolness that enveloped him as he moved, and he imagined himself in an earlier day, trudging barefooted along these hills, dressed perhaps in a monkey suit, bringing drinks to Massa on the patio. When had it happened? When had he come to hate so?

  He moved in a rhythmic trot, his giant athlete’s body swinging free and easy, the way he used to on the grass covered fields of football, when he performed in the big open-air cage for the whites lucky enough to have a friend who could help them get season’s tickets.

  No matter when he started to hate. He hated. That was enough of an answer, but then he remembered. King Kong was why he hated.

  Butler had had a particularly bitter argument with his sister, had gone out into the New York night, and somehow had wound up listening to a free lecture on racism at the New School for Social Research.

  The lecturer was one of that roving band of non-teaching teachers who make a headline with one interesting, if erroneous, statement and then milk it for lecture fees at campuses for the next twenty years. The lecturer began to talk about racism in the movies, drawing unsupported conclusions from unsubstantiated data, to the growing applause of the two hundred people, mostly white, in the audience.

  Then the house lights dimmed and film clips from the old King Kong classic began to be shown on the screen. There were five minutes of the giant ape terrorizing Fay Wray in the jungle, then climbing the Empire State Building with her in his giant hand, then standing there atop the building until he was gunned down by the fighter planes.

  The speaker seemed to want to match the auditorium darkness with the lack of light in his own analysis.

  King Kong, he said, was just a thinly veiled at
tack by while filmmakers on black sexuality, a pandering-to-the-redneck’s fear of the potent black man. The leering expressions of King Kong as he lifted the white girl up in his giant black hand; his mindless, headlong, unswerving search for her which typified the mythical lust of black men for white women; and the cheaply symbolic end where King Kong was shot down while hanging on to the building’s phallic symbol of a tower, thus signifying that the black man would be done in by his erect phallus—all these were cited as proofs by the speaker.

  Butler looked around the auditorium at the heads nodding up and down in agreement.

  And these were the liberals, he thought, the best hope of blacks in America—and not one of them questioned, for even a moment, their own willingness to equate a giant movie monkey with a black man. Didn’t they teach anthropology in the schools any more? Didn’t they teach anything? The ape was hairy, and blacks were hairless. Blacks had thick lips, but apes had no lips at all. And yet these looney-tunes could believe that people would find blacks and apes interchangeable. Why could they believe that of others, if they didn’t really know it of themselves?

  And they were supposed to be the best America had to offer.

  Butler had left the auditorium convinced by the speaker of just one thing: his sister had been right and he had been wrong. It would take confrontation and possibly violence to get what the black man deserved in America.

  Butler tried. Then came that visit to the Loni village, when William Forsythe Butler had known that he had come home. He heard the legend of the Loni and knew that he—he alone—could be the redeemer of that legend, that he could use the Loni to take over power in Busati and show what a black man could do with a government if given half a chance.

  He was at the house now. It was dark and silent. He was glad there were no dogs. Willie Butler was afraid of dogs.

  He paused close to the wall of the house, looking around him, remembering the floor plan that had been outlined to him by a researcher, who had found it in the Library of Congress, under Historical Homes of Virginia. The girl’s room would be second floor front right. He looked up. Latticework, buried under vines, covered the front of the big building. He hoped the thin wood would hold his weight.